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Ok, call me crazy but the frequency of Blackface-related incidents in this country (the ones that have been reported at least) has got me thinking that the perpetrators are not necessarily “unaware.” The most recent offensive case involved a second grader in Colorado. Ironically enough, his parents made him up in blackface as a way to make him appear like Martin Luther King Jr. during a school presentation he was doing on the civil rights leader.

According to ABC News:

Sean King had a vision for his project, part of “Wax Museum Day” at Meridian Ranch Elementary School in Peyton, Colo., said his mother Michelle King-Roca.

“He said, ‘Mom, I want to wear a black suit because that’s what he wore, a black tie, a white shirt and also I want to do my face black and wear a mustache,” she told ABC affiliate KRDO.

As parents and their pint-sized historical figures waited to file into a classroom on Wednesday, the principal asked King-Roca to remove her son’s make-up, she said.

Instead, she ignored the request and waited for Sean’s presentation.

King-Roca said she was then called to the principal’s office where she, her husband and Sean had a discussion with three school officials. Unsatisfied with the situation, King-Roca pulled her son out of school for the day.

Thank god the school principal had enough sense to reprimand the parents and convey disapproval. It’s hard to believe that after all these stories and the public disapproval with blackface, people continue to engage in it and then cry naivete.

It’s sad that this young student had to be involved in this very public embarrassment. Let this be yet another lesson for people in this country who have yet to receive the forever-circulating memo which states that “blackface is offensive.”

via MadameNoire